Last High End devices

81 comments

There needs to be a law mandating expandable storage in phones.
- The market will regulate itself, the consumer decides with his/her/* money, feel free to start your own company producing it (with your own money) \s
  Sorry for that.
  
  I know this is sarcasm, but I still have to also point out that companies literally conspire with each other to undermine the consumer's ability to choose. Remember when Apple removed the headphone jack and Android vendors mocked their decision for all of one year before immediately following suit? That's 100% intentional and planned from the start. They know we want to vote with our money, which is why they do everything they can to make sure we don't have that choice.

Not that I think it was a good reason for ditching them whatsoever, but one of the main reasons given has a tiny bit of merit:
Allegedly, a lot of users often cheaped out on SD cards and then used them as adopted system storage where they moved all their apps to. This had the effect of completely tanking phone performance and then they would often get corrupted after a bit of use taking user data with them. This then generated a load of negative reputation about the devices being slow and unreliable, when the problem was the choice of SD card, and generated a load of wasted money in supporting these users when that happened (think unnecessary RMAs, etc).
Personally I think they should just have restricted it to A1+ SD cards, and sucked up the people complaining about their bargain bin Scrandrisk SD not working. But I guess they saw an opportunity to have their cake and eat it by just removing it and charging a premium for larger storage skus.
- Question is rather: why does Android not allow any distinction between Internal and external/removable?
  My downloaded media files belong on the SD card, but APKs, sqlite DBs and temp files don't belong there. But de facto, it's just used as an extension for internal storage. That's just stupid.
  
  it does, or at least older versions of Android did
  
  How did you miss the opportunity to use scamdisk instead?
  
  In nature, sometimes the shittiest design is still successful
  
  That very much isn't the case beyond like a decade+ ago. For the last decade its been not possible, or extra work to install apks on sd card. The choice is there, but it's far from default.
- There is a UFS-II specification and even a PCIe version specifically for micro SD cards. It was all planned out, and it would have been trivial to tell consumers: "Yo need card with more contacts as shown in picture". But no, the biggest manufacturer of flash storage is samsung, and they decided they'd rather sell higher storage capacity phones as a premium. Easy to do when you're the second biggest manufacturer of of phones and apple already paved the way.
- I literally never heard or read about a user say that when using an sd card. They just took it out to charge more for more storage.
  
  It's not the users saying it, it's the OEMs. Back when this was a new discussion, I at least remember Google saying this as justification for why it stopped including them in their devices after the nexus 4

HTC released a phone this year that had expandable storage AND a headphone jack
AND it came with a charger in the box.
I gonna have to wait and see if they actually support this phone but if they do and continue to release phones like this (and ditch the curved glass screen) I would be totally down to switch.
- What phone is this? I thought they released one but no jack. I'd be interested if it has one and an unlockable bootloader.
  Nevermind. Just saw your post under.
  
  Since the thread has grown large and I had trouble finding the comment I'll just link it here (sorry the link is instance specific, it seems you can't make relative ones)

another advantage of the glorious fairphone
- My fp4 has been very disappointing so far tbh, after a year or so of using it it's slow unresponsive and the mic doesn't work
  
  It's not supposed to do that. My FP3 got unresponsive after a while as well. The trick was to open it up and gently tighten all screws.
  
  I have experienced that the microphone is in a weird spot on the left border of the phone, frequently where my fingers are placed when calling. So maybe check if you're covering it too!
  
  Isn't the point of the FP to be able to change parts easily?
  
  I have no issues like that. Maybe your microphone is damaged. What has been bugging me is the top speaker sounds terrible.
  
  Seriously, I'd also recommend to unscrew the screen and screw it back together. For me it made wonders. And if this also doesn't bring you anything, you should text support - in the end you have a warranty for a reason, right
  
  for this reason I waited for the Fairphone 5 which is responsive, has an oled display and the components Work without issue. have had it for a year and am looking forward to still using it in 6 years from now
- waiting for the framework phone
- The few advantages you mean, wouldn't mind the FP if they'd use a processor that wasn't years old and at least performed better than the Tensor G2 (A processor highly regarded as absolute crap)
  
  The fp4 has an ok cpu with a Snapdragon 750, and fp5 is pretty good, has a QCM6490.
  Not the best value for money though considering the price of similar spec phones 😅 (except that will be worth it if you end up needing to replace the screen)

Last with a headphone jack on the flagship while still allowing bootloader unlocking too. This is why I picked one up last year.
- Was going to get a Sony. Then I saw their update roadmap... 2 years of major updates and another one for security patches, that was it. Noped out because of that. I'd like a headphone jack and an sd card slot, but I'd like even more to keep such an expensive device for more than three years.
  Also, their phones are too big, but that's an issue for every single manufacturer.
  
  That is a real concern & it seems they are moving to 4 years of updates as well as not rolling out a new phone every year, but given that LineageOS supports the phones, even if I am not getting firmeware updates, I am willing to take that risk since I get more IO.
  The Xperia 5 is a skinny 6.1" & many consider it to be a small phone option in 2024.
- True. I also have a XA2 with SailfishOS.
  
  I saw the SailfishOS support last month. I would have picked up a 10 instead of 5 even with the non-flapship specs to have a way ‘out’ of Android in case. It is quite a suprise Sony is their chosen brand over the more popular option (even if they have worse IO)—butt the bigger shame is not extending support to the flagship 1 & 5 😔

When SD card is the only criteria for a 'high end' phone
- It’s not. Maybe I worded it poorly. I mean that Sony is the last smartphone manufacturer where the high end line got MicroSD slots. The others removed them. (Google doesn’t count, they never got one)
  
  Wait did Samsung take them away again??
- Yeah, shouldn't say high end, but rather non-anti-consumer
  
  You clearly never had a Sony smart TV or dealt with their support. They care as much about consumers as the rest.

I have a recent Xiaomi that supports 2 sim + storage and a 3.5mm jack. I'm on Redmi Note 12 (don't recommend since memory management is atrocious)

didnt HTC latest phone got sd card and 3,5mm back?
- Where?! I want to check it out
  
  HTC U24 Pro
  Only issue I have is the curved glass screen. My butterfingers would not get along. That and I want to see how long their software support lasts since I've heard it was spotty in the past.
- I guess you could edit it to have them crawling out of the grave? Though a bit of a stretch to call that phone high end.
  I also think Mordechai and Rigby should be HTC abd Google, given they sold (most) of their phone team to Google to help with the Pixel phones (and to highlight that Google also removed SD slots.. RIP Nexus)

Motorola still has them

This image by itself always makes me sad for Skips...
Amazing show

Been using syncthing with a script on my PC to keep copying stuff on another non synced location in the same filesystem with deduplication enabled (zfs). Technical solution, sadly, not many people are doing it... Btw i use.. Xdd
- Syncthing is really nice, I am also using it to Sync PC, Laptop, Phone and NAS.

81 comments